is wrong with this lady," he said. "Her
history speaks for itself."
As this new interpretation of Amy
Bishop s past took hold, Judy Bishop
began her own metamorphosis in the
public eye. The grief-stricken mother
transformed into a manipulative schemer
who had subverted the law in order to
protect her wayward child. In this new
interpretation, Judy resembled the Joan
Crawford character in "Mildred Pierce,"
a strenuously doting mother who covers
up a string of misdeeds, including mur-
der, committed by her daughter, with
disastrous results.
Euripides describes motherhood as
"a potent spell," and the human instinct
to protect one s children can inspire awe.
One winter day in northern Quebec
some years ago, a polar bear wandered
into a village and approached a seven-
year-old Inuit child. The child s mother
threw herself at the seven-hundred-
pound animal, and held it off until a
hunter arrived and shot it.
Of course, it s one thing to save your
children from certain death and another
to shield them from criminal prosecu-
tion. But most parents would likely rec-
ognize the impulse to cover for a child s
transgressions, whether or not they
might actually do so themselves. Several
years ago, an Atlanta elementary-school
teacher named Sheila Michael was
sentenced to eight years in prison for
concealing her twenty-two-year-old
daughter s involvement in a hit-and-run
accident that killed five people. While a
manhunt was under way for the driver
who caused the accident, Michael per-
suaded a mechanic to mask the damage
to the family car. It emerged in court
that her daughter had wanted to con-
fess, but Michael had told her not to,
because, as the judge observed, "you did
not want to lose her."
Had Judy Bishop, witness to the
death of her own son, made a similar
calculation?
Cold cases are hard to investigate
under the best of circumstances,
and the shooting of Seth Bishop was
especially difficult because it had not
been treated as a crime to begin with.
Neither the Braintree police nor the
state police had run much of an inves-
tigation. None of the physical evidence
had been retained---even the Mossberg
shotgun had vanished after the ballis-
tics tests. There were a few perfunctory
crime-scene photographs, but the
Bishop house had not been subjected to
a comprehensive investigation; in any
case, the integrity of the scene had been
compromised by the sympathetic neigh-
bors who had wiped away the blood.
There was another problem: by
2010, the statute of limitations had long
since expired on any crimes that Amy
might be charged with in relation to the
confrontation at Dinger Ford. The only
crime that had no statute of limitations
was murder, but, to convict Amy of
that, prosecutors would have to prove
that she had intentionally killed her
brother.
One day, as investigators were re-
viewing the crime-scene photographs,
they stumbled on a possible clue. In
one of the pictures taken in Amy s
room, a copy of the National Enquirer
was visible on the floor. Someone in
the district attorney s office ordered the
issue from the Library of Congress, and
investigators saw that much of it was
devoted to the murder of the parents of
Patrick Duffy, an actor on "Dallas." On
November 18, 1986, two young assail-
ants had killed Duffy s parents in the
Montana bar that they owned. They
used a twelve-gauge shotgun and fled
the scene, brandishing the weapon in
an attempt to steal a getaway car. This
may have seemed like a tenuous basis
for divining Amy s mental state on the
day of the shooting, but investigators
wondered if Amy had seen the article
as a kind of instruction manual. Wil-
liam Keating, the district attorney at
the time, suggested to the Globe that
the photograph could be used to prove
intent.
In April, 2010, local authorities
opened an inquest into Seth s death.
Twenty witnesses appeared at a red
brick courthouse in Quincy. Tom Pet-
tigrew, one of the mechanics who had
encountered Amy at Dinger, described
her holding the shotgun, saying, "Put
your hands up!"
Solimini, the cop, recalled how
strange it was to hear Judy Bishop ask
for Polio by his first name. "I never
heard anybody call him John," he said.
Kenneth Brady, a sergeant who was in
the station that day, testified that he,
too, heard Judy ask for the chief. James
Sullivan, the lieutenant who questioned
Amy, said that he had actually written
the words "murder" and "assault with a
dangerous weapon" on the charging
sheet. But, because the officers were
later instructed to release Amy, she was
never charged with those crimes.
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